


i hope you lose your way

by callunavulgari



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Growing Apart, Light Angst, M/M, Reunions, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23780341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: The last summer that he and Sora were together,trulytogether, before the inexplicable pull of adulthood drew them further and further apart until that thread finally snapped, they went on a road trip. They were eighteen years old and as on top of the world as one can be at that age - brimming with the golden-tinged euphoria of youth and wonder and something like hope, a wallet full of cash in both their pockets from summer jobs that didn’t yet need to be fed into the greedy maw of bills and insurance payments and fucking rent.“Why not?” Sora had asked. They could do it. Get in Riku’s beat up old sedan and drive, just the two of them. And they did, because they were eighteen and Riku was high on the freckles across the bridge of Sora’s nose, on his endless tanned legs, and the way he smiled when he’d just woken up with granules of sand still clinging to his throat.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	i hope you lose your way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faorism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faorism/gifts).



> The prompt: do you follow directions? sora/riku. 
> 
> You literally gave me this prompt a year ago, in January. So, uh. Whoops? 
> 
> The title of the fic is from [Godmanchester Chinese Bridge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp0j6q7oZSw), which is also the song that heavily influenced basically the entire fic. It's a nice song, give it a listen.

The last summer that he and Sora were together, _truly_ together, before the inexplicable pull of adulthood drew them further and further apart until that thread finally snapped, they went on a road trip. 

Sora insisted on it. 

They were eighteen years old and as on top of the world as one can be at that age - brimming with the golden-tinged euphoria of youth and wonder and something like hope, a wallet full of cash in both their pockets from summer jobs that didn’t yet need to be fed into the greedy maw of bills and insurance payments and fucking rent. 

“Why not?” he’d asked. 

They could do it. Just get in Riku’s beat up old sedan and drive, just the two of them.

And they did, because they were eighteen and Riku was high on the freckles across the bridge of Sora’s nose, on his endless tanned legs, and the way he smiled when he’d just woken up with granules of sand still clinging to his throat. 

Riku remembers the road trip in picture perfect clarity. It was a sequence of moments, he’d realize later, where he was the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life - a string of endless days that blended together seamlessly. They cut the country in half, divided and conquered via back roads and motels that smelled of mildew and sweat. 

He remembered the bickering most, Sora driving them in circles through tiny towns in the middle of nowhere because he could, because they had the time and he stubbornly refused to buy them a map. 

It’s a beautiful memory, that summer. 

Sora wore shorts every day and shouted along to the radio, louder and louder until Riku inevitably joined him. They slept on scratchy sheets and sometimes, if they were very unlucky and very lost, tucked uncomfortably together in the backseat, parked illegally in state parks with elbows knifing into spines and wrists bent the wrong way. 

His favorite towns were the ones on the coast, where the air smelled of salt and sunscreen, the endless spread of the ocean before them. Riku had spent long hours staring out at that ocean, thinking of that raft that he and Sora had nearly built when they were kids. He’d wondered if it was ever at all possible - if they could have taken that raft, with their meager handful of coconuts and mushrooms, and just sailed away from it all. Live forever, on the sea, just him and Sora and the sun. 

It wasn’t, of course. They would have drowned within a week or starved to death a couple hundred miles from shore. But it was a nice dream.

Riku held onto that dream, even back then, when Sora was still his to touch. 

The first night that they spent in a hotel was exhilarating, heady, their eyes bright and their hands eager. They could touch each other, in that space. The gloom of the room couldn’t touch them, not when they had this, the freedom to touch as much as they wanted. They didn’t have to subsist on quick kisses and rushed handjobs, they could gorge themselves, touch all night if they wanted.

> A snippet of memory, the only thing that Riku will remember from that first night:
> 
> Sora’s eyes, blue and shining, looking down at him with such softness that Riku couldn’t help kissing that pink curve, that sliver of a smile.
> 
> Sweat, clinging to their throats and the backs of their thighs.
> 
> The feel of Sora all around him. The sweet, narrow curve of his waist. His hands wrapped warmly around Riku’s hips. His knees, rubbed raw from the carpet. The intimate curve of an ankle the next morning, peeking out from under the sheets. 

There were other nights like that - frantic moments in the backseat of the sedan, in salt and sand, spread out across springy grass in the middle of forever - but that first night was the one he remembered above all. 

All summers must end, though. 

The week they’d turned back towards home had been oppressive, a sense of dread hanging above them, clouding the atmosphere. They were grumpy, miserable, and Riku snapped at Sora almost as much as Sora snapped at him.

The last night, when they stopped at an inn a hundred miles from home, Sora had turned to him, tucked his face into Riku’s throat and murmured, “We’ll have this forever, right?”

And Riku, who was still wrapping his mind around the idea of forever, told him yes.

He hadn't known then that it was a lie.

There was a bridge that they’d crossed, weeks ago at that point in time, years ago now, that stretched three miles over shining, blue-green water. Sora had insisted on walking it, because it was in a pamphlet back in their room at the motel and because they’d spent weeks crammed into a car six plus hours a day. 

The walk wasn’t a bad one. The breeze smelled like the ocean and the sun was warm on the back of their necks. In the middle of the bridge, they’d stopped for lunch, and Riku had bought Sora an ice-cream from the tiny cart set into that little narrowed out space in the very center of it all. It would have been picturesque if it weren’t for the seagulls.

The bridge was a memory. 

A moment. 

Riku is thirty-two years old and standing on it now, thinking about that trip, about directions, and being lost for the sake of being lost, and how he hasn’t seen Sora since he was twenty years old.

It’s hard, growing older. Growing apart. He has a cat and a studio apartment in a town too big for him. He misses the coast, the sea, misses that golden summer and the heat of Sora’s body.

They didn’t break up. They just… stopped seeing each other. 

Riku had known it was coming. He’d seen it, looming on the horizon in those last few days. In the weeks after the trip, they’d always missed each other. One of them was busy. One of them was out of town. And then they’d moved completely, in opposite directions. Sora to the east coast, Riku to the west. 

They texted, for a while. Called each other every few weeks. Then on holidays. Then on birthdays, a once a year text with a haphazard, unfeeling reply of thanks. 

Now, Sora’s something stupid - an investment banker, Riku thinks. Something so diametrically opposed to the Sora he used to know that it had left him reeling the first time he found out. He’d wondered, how someone like Sora, so vibrant and full of life, could settle into a profession so mind-numbingly boring.

Riku composed music. Soothing ambient pieces that had a very particular circle of followers. It was music that you fell asleep or got high to. There was no in between.

He’d tried dating for a while, but it never felt quite right. No one fit him the way Sora had, and over the years, it had become too difficult. It wasn’t fair to stay with someone, not when he was still hung up on the boy he’d left behind the summer he turned eighteen.

The bridge is how he remembers it, though it looks different at night. It’s lit up in lights, the ocean churning black beneath him. 

It’s still here, this bridge. This piece of memory.

He fumbles his cell phone in his pocket, turning it over and over again as he walks. There is no one else making this journey. In the summer heat, dozens of other people had walked or jogged alongside them, but now, in the dead of the night in mid-November, Riku makes his walk alone. 

His throat is dry and now that he’s here, all sorts of nagging doubts are filling his head. Stupid things that he hasn’t worried about in years. What does he look like now, to someone who hasn’t seen him in more than a decade? Does he look the same? Different? His hair is longer than it had been that summer, when he’d still kept it short. He has faint wrinkles, just the beginning stages, at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His hair hasn’t changed, but did Sora’s? Will he be graying at the temples? Will he be wearing a suit, like he is in all of his photos online?

> The cell phone, lit up in his pocket from repeated brushes of his fingers, and a series of text messages:
> 
> _I miss you._
> 
> And
> 
> _We should meet up._
> 
> And
> 
> _Remember our bridge?_
> 
> And
> 
> _Sunday, midnight?_
> 
> And
> 
> _I’ll be there._

He’s afraid, Riku realizes now. His palms are damp and his breathing is uneven. His heart is an unpredictable, noisy beast in his chest. It feels like a panic attack, a bit, but it also feels like something he hasn’t felt in years. 

Love. Hope. Mixing together with the fear into this horrible, wonderful thing. 

He is steps away from the center of the bridge, and he has to swallow around the knot in his throat when he recognizes a figure sitting at one of the picnic tables crammed into that little, narrow space.

The figure is bent over his phone, lit up by the streetlight above him. He is not wearing a suit. It makes Riku want to laugh, that he’d expected it, because what kind of psychopath would walk a mile and a half across open water in a fucking suit? 

Sora’s wearing shorts. 

They aren’t the awful things he’d worn when he was younger, multi-colored and equipped with approximately a million pockets. They’re simple jogging shorts. He’s got a t-shirt on over it, damp with sweat, like he’d jogged here.

In that moment, Riku is a spectator. Sora hasn’t seen him yet. He still has the option to be a coward. To walk away from this. To turn his back on finding out what kind of man that summer boy had turned into. 

But then where would he be? 

Always wondering. 

Always _wanting_.

Seeing Sora again has filled him with a yearning so powerful that he feels compelled to keep walking, his feet dragging him forwards, as if now, after years and years, they’ve finally found their true north.

He reaches the apex of his climb and stops. 

Opens his mouth.

Says, “Sora.”


End file.
